Category: Review

Code Name: Tiranga

  By

★★★
“Moderately spicy.”

This Indian movie flopped at the local box-office, and comes limping onto Netflix with an IMDb rating of just 3.2. Reviews there are largely scathing, calling it “unrealistic.” Oh, sure: but people bursting into song for elaborate musical numbers – that totally happens in Mumbai. To be clear, I love the likes of RRR. But realism, or anything in that solar system, is pretty low down on the list of reasons I watch Bollywood films. This is… well, serviceable, is what I’d call it. It is too long for the material, at 137 minutes, but again – length goes with the territory, it’s more a question whether the film is capable of filling it adequately. Here, not so much, at least in the second half.

The heroine is Durga Devi Singh (Chopra), an Indian spy whom we first meet honey-trapping Dr. Mirza Ali (Sandhu) in Afghanistan, in order to set a trap for terrorist leader, Khalid Omar (Kelkar). The trap fails, but Durga feels bad at having betrayed Mirza, for whom she has genuine feelings. A subsequent mission sees her sent to kill a captured operative, to prevent him from spilling secrets to the Pakistani intelligence agency. She ends up rescuing him instead, but is hurt in the process, which brings her back into the company of the good doctor. During the rescue attempt, Omar’s wife is also killed, a death for which the terrorist blames Durga, and is now prepared to go to any lengths for revenge on her.

As spy stuff goes, it’s all fairly generic, with other threads such as the presence of a mole inside the Indian spy service. There is not much novel or exciting here, but it is carried out with an adequate degree of skill, and really only one particularly gratuitous song, when Mirza goes all karaoke at a wedding for what seems like half an hour. The camerawork is nicely scope, with a lot of exotic locations, and while Chopra won’t be winning any awards for her action, she functions decently. It’s just pleasing to see a genuine Bollywood action heroine in this genre: things like the YRF Spy Universe are typically so macho, they’re in danger of choking on their own mustaches.

The first half definitely works better, with the plot consistently moving forward. The movie feels, from an action point, that it peaks too early, and then lumbers its way through the final hour, before the inevitable face-off between Durga and Khalid, which goes about as you would expect. Things then continue to run on, as the mole’s identity is revealed, and the story rehashed in flashback to that end. I may have been hunting for snacks in the cupboard by this point. There’s a truly weird sequence where the film inexplicably goes into first-person shooter mode for an extended period, which had me trying to figure out if it was entirely CGI. They likely should not have bothered, yet it’s a rare blatant misstep, in a film which seems to pride itself on aggressively mediocre competence.

Dir: Ribhu Dasgupta
Star: Parineeti Chopra, Harrdy Sandhu, Sharad Kelkar, Rajit Kapur

Cloak Games: Thief Trap, by Jonathan Moeller

  By

Literary rating: ★★★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆☆

I previously reviewed Moeller’s Ghost in the Cowl, which comes from a different series, and enjoyed this every bit as much. Indeed, I think the premise here is better, rather than the fairly generic (if well-executed) fantasy of Cowl. However, in terms of action, the heroine here is second banana, and just as with Cowl, this consequently falls fractionally short of Seal of Approval. In this case, Earth has been conquered by a race of elves, whose High Queen has taken over and now rules with an iron fist. They had been booted off their home world, and traveled the Shadowlands, the path between the worlds, before breaking the seal to Earth.

Doing so allowed magic to come with them, though elves are largely the only ones allowed to practice it. The human race is now effectively indentured servants or worse. Which brings us to our heroine, Nadia Moran. To save her little brother Russell from a lethal disease, she agreed to work for an archmage called Morvilind. But now, she’s his slave, constrained both by him being the only one keeping Russell alive, and his magical skills which can kill her at any time. He trained her in certain areas, in order to become his personal thief, liberating magic artifacts, antiquities, art, etc. This included spells, of use in these jobs. But she’s not happy about it, wanting freedom for her and Russell.

Her latest task is particularly tricky, stealing an Assyrian tablet from a human industrialist. She’s not given the whole truth about either the object or its current owner, and it becomes apparent someone else is interested in him too. The someone else is Corvus, a sorta-human (it’s complicated…) who has abilities of his own, and handles the action elements here. They eventually agree to team up to help each other’s overlapping goals, but will face threats both temporal and almost indescribably Lovecraftian, emanating out of the Shadowlands. It makes for highly entertaining reading, and at only 180 pages, I raced through it very quickly. For ninety-nine cents, it’s fine, but I would hope further installments offer a little more bang for your $3.99. 

There were a couple of bits of world building which didn’t quite gel. The conquest happened in 2013, and we’re now three centuries past it. But it feels like technology is unchanged: Nadia still drives a sedan, for example. If you consider how radically different life was three centuries ago, it’s odd: maybe the High Queen dislikes innovation? It’s a minor, albeit niggling, glitch in what’s otherwise a fun scenario, with a well-constructed heroine who offers plenty of room for development. And with eleven books to come, that’s certainly necessary! By the end of this one, she has an ally in Corvus, some additional talents of which Morvilind is unaware, and appears slightly closer to achieving her eventual goal of freedom. I’m looking forward to that journey. 

Author: Jonathan Moeller
Publisher: CreateSpace, available through Amazon, both as a paperback and an e-book
Book 1 of 12 in the Cloak Games series.

1 More Round

  By

★★★
“I am Jim’s Complete Lack of Surprise.”

Reading the comments on YouTube, there’s an awful lot of “inspirational” and “motivational” to be found there, and these are not wrong. This is as template-based a sports movie as you can imagine, to the point that it feels almost more like a Victorian melodrama, in terms of its saintly heroine, fighting (literally) for what she believes in. This sort of thing would normally be completely ludicrous, and isn’t helped by James Schafer’s soundtrack, which leaves no orchestral cliché uncued. However… I found a genuine sincerity on display here, helped by a very good performance from Stone, and this really sells the sub-Hallmark conceit at its core. Her character believes, so you do. 

She plays up-and-coming amateur MMA fighter Jackie DeSpain, whose life has issues. She lives with her junkie sister Marie, whose little daughter Grace (Darling), is simply as adorable as a boxful of kittens. This situation preys on Jackie’s mind, causing her to lose a fight against Kate ‘The Killer’ Kinsella, much to the concern of her trainer, Hank (Wade). For when I say “lose”, we’re deep in “beaten to a pulp” territory. Though a positive is, this brings her into contact with hunky doctor Oliver (Akers). After Marie overdoses, Grace is taken away by the authorities, but if Jackie can just win enough fights to turn pro, then maybe she can convince a judge that she should have custody of her niece, while Marie rehabs. 

You should easily be able to figure out from the above, where everything is going to go the rest of the way, and the film does not deviate from that template an iota. Will there be training montages? Could there be an injury threatening to derail Jackie’s plans? Might there be – oh, I’m just speculating here – blossoming romance between Jackie and Oliver? I’ll never tell. But despite the resolute predictability of proceedings, I remained engaged to a greater degree than you would imagine. Lyde has directed a number of films we’ve reviewed here, most recently Scarlett, also starring Stone, and the action here is good. If the MMA fights are somewhat stylized, they’re still credible, and have more impact than I was expecting.

There is, however, a curious lack of any antagonist here: just about everybody is nice: even the social worker who whisks Grace away into the care of the state is quite apologetic about it. Kinsella is likely the closest, yet she is more of an obstacle than an enemy, vanishing completely from the film between her fights against Despain. Despite the lack of dramatic conflict, and a large dose of the review tagline (top) as things wound there way forward, I bought into Jackie’s situation, and unquestionably found myself cheering her on. While this may be the simplest of stories, I found it executed well enough to overcome the limitations of its plot.

Dir: John Lyde
Star: Melanie Stone, Jasen Wade, Isaac Akers, Rosie Darling
[The film is available now on YouTube and is embedded below]

The Stolen Valley

  By

★★½
“Topples over into earnestness”

This feels like a modern Western. I think it was shot up on the borders of Utah and Arizona, since I recognized scenes shot at the Buckskin Tavern, in that area. While contemporary, with relatively minor tweaks, it could easily take place a century or more ago, back when robber land barons were a thing in the Old West. Lupe (Covarrubias) is in desperate straits, with her mother Adamina (Miranda) in need of money to pay for medical treatment she can’t afford. There’s another shock: the father, Carl (Fitzgerald), who Lupe long believed dead, is actually alive, and might be the last chance of getting the necessary funds. So she decides to make the journey to see him.

Barely is she under way – she’s seeking to pawn jewellery to raise a little cash – when she encounters Maddie (Hethcoat). And when I say “encounters”, she comes out of the back of the pawn-shop, guns blazing. For Maddie has a sizable debt too, to some unpleasant people, and now they perceive Lupe as her accomplice. The two young women decide Carl could solve both of their problems, only to find him engaged in a dubious scheme to sell off land, which actually belongs to Adamina, to an oil company, having convinced them Adamina is dead. It’s a move which will result in the indigenous people being thrown off the property, and Lupe’s unexpected presence clearly represents a threat to  the deal. 

This does a lot of things right. Most obviously, it takes place in some gorgeous locations, and the photography does them justice. The performances are generally effective as well, with Hethcoat in particular a lot of fun to watch. She cuts a striking figure with her blonde hair, cowboy hat, and a take no prisoners attitude. Maddie is in sharp contrast to Lupe, who has been brought up “the right way”, and they make for an amusing pairing as they play off each other. Although scenes like the gratuitous flamenco dancing may not move the plot forward, they are still amusing to watch, and they build the character. Indeed, they might be fun precisely because they are separate from the plot. 

Because that’s the film’s problem. It’s a script where far too much happens because the story needs it. Why did Adamina leave without taking the property deed, clearly her most precious asset? Why did Carl hang on, not just to the deed, but also the letter Adamina wrote to her own mother, for over twenty years? And don’t even start me on the remarkable coincidence of Maddie’s background. Add in a not-so subtle subtext of “Men are bad, and white men – they’re the worst“, and it all begins to topple over under the weight of its own moral superiority. I’ve no doubt Edwards’ heart is in the right place. However, the message here too often gets in the way of the movie. 

Dir: Jesse Edwards
Star: Briza Covarrubias, Allee Sutton Hethcoat, Micah Fitzgerald, Paula Miranda

Redhead

  By

★★
“Better dead than redhead.”

Written, directed by, and starring husband and wife team Sam and Johnna Hodge, this is the kind of film it would be easy to deride as poverty-row garbage from the bottom drawer. There’s precious little plot, some of the performances are painfully amateur, and it seems to exist mostly as a show-reel for spraying around corn syrup with red food colouring in it. And yet… If Chris and I made a movie – something we have discussed – it might well end up being not too dissimilar to this. On the other hand, if we had a spare $55,000 lying around – the budget here, according to the IMDb – we’d probably go on a nice holiday instead. 

Autumn Blacksmith (Hodge) survived being abducted and tortured by infamous psychopath Oscar Sawyer (Stinnett), finally escaping after killing him. However, the experience left her severely traumatized, and the slightest unfortunate interaction with any man is sufficient to push her over the edge into a murderous rage. Cue the corn syrup. Rinse, repeat for 90-odd minutes, until the end credits roll. Occasional hallucinations of Sawyer returning from the grave to haunt her, and a brief attempt by her therapist (Holland) to check in, offer a small touch of variety. The West Virginia cops, led by Detective Rogers (Robinson), are not exactly Sherlock Holmes. Then again, locals are remarkably chill about Autumn’s spree. The bartender where she kills her first victim says of him, “He was always an asshole.”

I was reminded of Michael and Anne Paul, another husband and wife film-making duo. They made Roman’s Bride, where the red-headed wife also goes on a killing spree. I think that worked a bit better, because its lead actress had an innocence about her, that provided an interesting contrast to her savagery. Here, Autumn is more blatantly mad, to the point you wonder why any man would try to chat her up. As a viewer, you’re never brought along on the journey into insanity. The way some of the local community end up assisting with, or even active participants in, her murders could have been used to provide another twist to the narrative. Nah. Open another bottle of Karo instead. 

Technically, it’s okay: the camera gets pointed in the right direction, it doesn’t succumb to underlit scenes, and the audio is fine. The soundtrack, also by Sam Hodge (not a surprise), has a nice throwback vibe, sounding like it was ripped off an eighties video nasty. But there is no real sense of progression or development, and the ending feels particularly sudden, going to the end credits immediately after she has disembowelled her final victim, a peeping Tom. We’re very little forward from where we were after her first murder. A sequel is in production though, so it appears there was enough of a market for this kind of thing. Will I watch it? [Sighs heavily] Yeah. I suspect I probably will.

Dir:Johnna Hodge, Sam Hodge
Star: Johnna Hodge, Ashley Stinnett, Will A. Holland, Travis Robinson

Female Special Police Officer

  By

★★★
“Die Hard in… um, a building?”

Really, this is so shameless in its appropriation as to be almost adorable. Cop Sheng Nan (Mu) is visiting her other half at a swanky function, when the event is attacked by thieves. Fortunately, when they take over the main room where everyone else is, she’s in the bathroom, and so is able to escape captivity. She is then forced to sneak around, using a combination of stealth and her cop skills to take on the criminals, who have to wait around for a time-locked safe to open. Does any of this sound familiar? If not, perhaps the scene where she drops a dead robber on a car to alert the authorities? Or where she leaps off the roof to avoid an explosion?

Be cautious if looking this up, because there’s another film, made the following year, with an almost identical title – it drops the final R off the title. This makes it seem as if they sit around filing memos and doing light paperwork, but given they’re called the Thunderbolt Women’s Commando Unit, I suspect they do not. There, the enemy is a drug cartel; here, it’s thieves. That all said, I have to deduct points for incredibly lazy script-writing in this. Even before we get to the wholesale lifting of elements from Die Hard, we get another trope so old it can be found carved onto the Pyramids. A hostage rescue, which is actually just a training mission? Never seen that before… [/sarcasm]

However, if the writer needs to be taken to a re-education camp, the execution is surprisingly good, to the point that I enjoyed this more than Cleaner, the considerably larger-budgeted Die Hard knock-off. It’s certainly less pretentious, and has no particular aspirations, beyond an attractive heroine kicking moderate ass. This lack of ambition is laudable, and running only seventy-eight minutes means it has no time for diversions, subplots or social commentary. Not when it has to copy the scene where a frontal assault by police gets explosively repelled (albeit less lethally, perhaps in deference to local cultural mores about killing cops). I may have yelled “The quarterback is toast!” at my television screen.

To be fair, it does become more of its own animal in the second half. The power is cut briefly, allowing two of Sheng Nan’s colleagues in to join her in the building. On the criminal side, things don’t unfold exactly as expected either. Not that anyone here exactly Alan Rickman, and this is probably the area where there’s the biggest gulf separating it from Die Hard. I will say, the finish is also weak sauce, with things just petering out, rather than ending in a satisfactory bang. At least the chief villain didn’t due in a long plummet, with a surprised look on their face. Not a patch on the inspiration, obviously. Yet I’ve seen equally shameless copies which were far less entertaining. 

Dir: Chang Chen
Star: Mu Qi Miya, Cheng Qi Meng, Wei Zi Qian, Mayela Magru 

Sheriff Bride: Rob’s Story, by Joi Copeland

  By

Literary rating: ★★
Kick-butt quotient: ☆☆☆

This is the last (and at 120 pages, slightly the longest) book in the Sheriff Bride series, each installment written by a different author, which my wife Barb and I read together. (She appreciates these books much more than I do.) Here, our focus is on the youngest Hardin sister, Rob (Roberta); and three years have passed since the opening of the first book, so she’s now very close to 18, and probably is 18 by the end of this installment. (In western Texas in the late 1870s or early 80s, she would be viewed as of legitimately marriageable age –and the series title is a clue that this might be a relevant consideration.) While I don’t go so far as to recommend the series to most readers, if you do read it, I recommend doing so in order; you need the understanding of the situation and the characters as these have developed over time in the earlier books in order to properly experience this one.

Joi Copeland is a more prolific author than any of the other three in this tetralogy, and stylistically a somewhat more polished writer, with less of an aversion to pronouns than her colleagues (though there are still places where she under-uses them). This book is also free of editorial issues. Otherwise, its general flavor is pretty consistent with the previous books; plot-wise, it’s distinct from them in two ways. One of these would involve a major spoiler (though the reader learns it fairly early on). The other is that it’s the only one of the four to feature a sustained, multiple-combatant gunfight, with – for this series – a high body count. (It has the highest kick-butt quotient of any of the four books.) However, it has to be said that the author doesn’t handle action scenes very well. With this one, we actually come in on the action only when it’s almost over; then the part we missed is later recounted by a participant, in no great detail. So a lot of the dramatic potential here is simply thrown away. And although the neon lamp wasn’t invented until 1902, when I read the reactions of two characters to each other’s looks in the first chapter, I commented to Barb that we have a flashing neon sign that they’re a couple-to-be. :-)

For me, the main factor that pulled down my rating was the marked implausibility of the plotting, all through the book. Yes, I can see why it’s necessary for Rob to have a new deputy, given that the one in the third book (where we were never even told his name; here we learn that it’s Pedro) had to move to take care of his “ailing” parents. But the misunderstanding surrounding that hire would never have been allowed to occur in real life. Copeland doesn’t explain why Leslie needs the deputy job badly enough for that character’s desperate suggestion to seem realistic. Travel between Waterhole and neighboring Buford, Texas is initially shown to take nearly all day; but it can suddenly be accomplished in vastly fewer hours when the plot needs it to be. Given that all of the Hardin sisters are supposedly very savvy gunfighters, two of them make a ridiculously dumb tactical decision here, and Rob acts at one point with a really amateurish recklessness which even Barb, who’s more inclined to be lenient in judging these books than I am, considered out of character. And though I liked the basic gist of the ending, and though I consider myself an equalitarian feminist, another factor was my feeling that it’s irresponsible for a pregnant woman to insist on being in a physically dangerous situation if it isn’t absolutely necessary.

Ardent fans of Western romance, who like the genre enough not to be too critical, can enjoy this series. But I don’t recommend it to readers who want more accomplished and textured writing.

Author: Joi Copeland
Publisher: Lovely Christian Romance, available from Amazon, both for Kindle and as a printed book.
A version of this review previously appeared on Goodreads.

Dead of Winter

  By

★★★½
“Old, bold and cold.”

Thompson seems to be having a second wind, making her first appearance on this site at the age of sixty-six. That’s a decade more than Liam Neeson was when he became an action star with Taken, and probably makes Thompson the oldest debutante here. This comes on the heels of series Down Cemetery Road which, while not quite qualifying here, certainly was more brisk than expected. At this rate, I might even have to forgive her for throwing shade at Audrey Hepburn. No question about the credentials of Winter for this site, since it plays like a cross between Fargo and Taken. There’s not a lot of fat here, certainly. Things kick off just a few minutes in, and barely stop thereafter.

Barb (Thompson) is on the way to a lake in Minnesota – a part played by Finland – for some ice fishing. She gets turned around, and stops at a remote cabin to ask for directions. There she meets an odd man (Menchaca), and notices some blood on the ground. Then, at the lake, she sees the man chasing after and recapturing a young woman (Marsden), so realizes she has stumbled into the middle of a kidnapping plot. After the obligatory “no signal” scene, Barb realizes she is the victim’s only hope. But the man may not be her biggest problem. His wife (Greer) is the real brains behind the operation, very highly motivated, and prepared to go to any lengths to stop Barb from interfering in the grim plan.

I will say, it does take a bit of getting used to, hearing Thompson going full Marge Gunderson, eh? This is no comment on the accuracy of the accent, a topic on which I am not qualified to speak. It’s just odd. However, this is not a particularly dialogue-heavy movie, with Barb spending much of it alone and in the wilderness. We never find out either of the antagonists’ names, incidentally, the end credits just calling them Purple Lady and Camo Jacket. The film focuses increasingly on the two women. Purple has nothing left to lose, generally having the edge in firepower and ruthlessness – as is demonstrated after Barb is able to reach help through a CB radio. But Barb has motivation of her own. 

This comes out in rather clunky flashbacks to the early days of her relationship with her husband. Truth be told, I didn’t feel these added particularly much; the same information could have been provided more efficiently, and in ways which didn’t derail the tension of the current situation. Though I did like how the young Barb is played by Thompson’s real-life daughter, Gaia Wise, I found myself impatient for the film to return to the one-on-one battle, which you know is going to end badly for someone. Or someones. The film doesn’t disappoint there, with a brutal struggle in the middle of a frozen lake, good enough to make me forget the combatants have a combined age of 116. 

Dir: Brian Kirk
Star: Emma Thompson, Judy Greer, Marc Menchaca, Laurel Marsden

Brave Citizen

  By

★★★½
“Bully for you…”

It appears that Korean educational establishments seem to have the same problems as Japanese ones – at least, going by the way they are depicted in the respective country’s movies. I certainly would not want to be a teacher in either country. Here, Mooyoung High has an award-winning anti-bullying policy. It’s a complete fabrication, as both staff and pupils are fully aware. The roost is run by Han Soo-kang (Lee), whose parents hold so much influence, he can do whatever he wants. And what he wants to do is run a reign of terror with his clique. He already drove a substitute teacher to commit suicide, and is now focused on subjecting Go Jin-hyeong (Park J-w) to daily torture.

Into the school comes replacement teacher So Si-min (Shin). Initially, she appears meek and submissive, to a fault. But her background is the complete opposite. She’s actually a former boxer, who missed out on an Olympic spot because… of reasons, shall we say, and is also well-versed in a number of other martial arts. When she sees Han brutalizing Go, she steps in, though manages to defuse the situation without violence – at least, initially. Since she wants to become a permanent member of staff, she can’t unleash her skills on the bully openly. So she dons a cat mask, in order to beat Han up. The resulting humiliation drives him mad, and he vows to find and defeat the kitty vigilante, by any means necessary.

There’s a good deal to enjoy here, in particularly the performances by leads Shin and Lee. The former captures a multi-faceted personality in So, who has a strong inclination towards justice, but is aware of the need for restraint – again, at least, initially. I enjoyed how the film is basically romance-free. She has a friend who is a cop. but there’s no indication this is anything but platonic, and the film doesn’t waste any time pretending otherwise. On the other side, Lee makes for an easily hateable villain. Han is entirely aware that he is untouchable by the authorities at the school, and struts about arrogantly, like a psychotic peacock. Right from the first scene, you’ll be very keen for him to get his just deserts. 

It does, probably, take slightly too long to get there. While there’s no romance, the film does tend to stray off into subplots that we could have done without. The main one is So’s strained relationship with her father, dating back to the Olympic try-outs where… yeah, I can’t say that aspect rang particularly true, or added much to proceedings. The action is moderate: the cat mask leaves me wondering how much of it was being done by the lead actress. But even if it wasn’t her, it’s still fairly well-handled. The story develops mostly as expected – if you’re anticipating a final face-off in which her real identity is exposed to the school, you won’t be far wrong. But it doesn’t feel clichéd, and most of the 112 minutes go by more than pleasantly. 

Dir: Park Jin-Pyo
Star: Shin Hye-sun, Lee Jun-Young, Park Jung-woo, Park Hyuk-kwon

Hole

  By

★★★½
“Tree’s a crowd.”

Well, this is unusual. We’ve never had a movie from Slovenia here before, a country I know almost entirely due to art-rock band Laibach. This seems to be barely known either, with a mere 26 votes on the IMDb at the time of writing. But it’s decent, and doesn’t hang about: at 75 minutes, there is not a lot of slack. Indeed, it’s a rare occasion where I would not have minded if this had been 15-20 minutes longer. It is certainly spare in terms of actors, with only three roles of significance. Mia (Cok) and Kevin (Plantan) are a couple of confidence operators, who prey on rich women: Kevin seduces them, and Mia robs them. Their latest mark is Ema (Krhin). 

Things go pear-shaped when Mia believes Kevin is getting too cosy with their target, and in a fit of jealousy, bludgeons Ema to death. To dispose of the body, they drive out into the woods [the only other Slovenian movie I have seen, horror movie Hillbillies, had a similarly rural setting]. However, while they are bickering about who should dig the grave, the corpse escapes, because Ema was merely unconscious, rather than dead. Mia and Kevin begin the hunt, knowing they’d be in real trouble if Ema makes it back to civilization. Kevin makes the ill-advised decision to snort some coke, followed by the consumption of some mushrooms he finds in the woods. That basically marks the end of his role as an active participant in the film. 

Thereafter, it’s the two women facing off, and this is where I would have liked to have seen things extended. It’s clear that both women are seeking to tap into their inner feral nature, and more of it (along the lines of Revenge, perhaps) would have been welcome. Mia and Ema appears to be under the protection of dark and light angels respectively – perhaps representing vengeance and survival? I dunno, I’m just speculating: it’s another angle which might have merited additional explanation. Though what we get in lieu of development is still fun: Mia may be the most foul-mouthed female character of the year, spraying F-bombs about, at a rate which would make Dexter Morgan’s sister blush. 

While the topic is clearly one which would lend itself to horror, events here play out as much in a vein of black comedy. For example, when Ema is wounded, she uses a sanitary pad as an impromptu Band-Aid. Hey, soaking up blood is soaking up blood, am I right? There are other moments which seem almost deliberately surreal, such as Mia hallucinating Kevin having sex with a tree. [Please read that sentence again, because it’s not one I expected to write when I got up this morning] It’s almost as if she was the one who had eaten the magic mushrooms. If there’s a lesson here, that’s probably it: when you go into any Slovenian woods, be sure to bring your own picnic. 

Dir: Dejan Babosek
Star: Lea Cok, Darja Krhin, Marko Plantan
a.k.a. Jama

No trailer I could find, but the clip below shows the final fight. Probably a spoiler :)